


Even if it makes you cry

by bowblade



Series: Viper's Kiss [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29116926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bowblade/pseuds/bowblade
Summary: She knows how this ends. But the heart wants what it wants, even if hers is not supposed to.
Relationships: Elizabeth Caledonia Ashe/Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix
Series: Viper's Kiss [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2188389
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	Even if it makes you cry

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes the widowmaker hours resume, and sometimes it's resolved by a lot of words about something that you properly ship now, and you do, in fact, cry
> 
> inspired by "what if _Cabaret_ but this time they kissed", and then plot happened, as well as a lot of interim kissing. reading _Cabaret_ is not essential but this picks up right where it left off.

It's cold.

She can't feel it, but Paris in winter doesn't change. She's meant to observe, to assess every situation, and this one is easy, as _everything_ around her is telling. The snow piled high and falling even now, the first of the year. The soft billow of wispy breath each time she exhales. Ashe shivering despite the extra layers meant to prevent it. 

Amélie wonders if Ashe would prefer to be inside, even if she had been the one to take her from the Cabaret. She had allowed it. The spotlight, the dance… a hand on her waist, the other lazily draped over her shoulder, all eyes on her but only one that _mattered_ , the thrill seeker unsatisfied and leading her away from applause to alleyway, asking if she trusts her, and she does.

She's not sure what happens now. Knows she shouldn't _stay_ to find out. She remembers, nights similar to this, the rush of adrenaline coursing through her after a performance, and—

She doesn't feel it. She feels _nothing_. But perhaps she was wrong, about Ashe. The cold is an inconvenience to getting what she wants; it was the tantalising _edge_ that made her shiver. The excitement.

Ashe hasn't let go of her, not since the dance, not out the door and not now as she looks her in the eye. She's looking for something. Permission. Indication. Desire. 

Whatever Ashe sees, she decides it's enough, and she leans in to kiss her.

Amélie freezes at the contact, as motionless and still as any statue. Ashe waits a moment or a lifetime before pulling away again, an unreceptive partner difficult to kiss, particularly with such a damming reaction. She tuts, clicks her tongue against her teeth – she's annoyed, Amélie thinks. Irritated. It's the exact noise she makes when a target won't move those last few centimetres into her scope, her patience expended.

She will leave, then. The scene plays out perfectly in her head. But for some reason Ashe doesn't. She takes a step back, but not _away_ , just enough to try to read her face, her expression, and Amélie doesn't know what she's looking _for_ , what she hopes to find. Whatever it is, she won't.

"Okay," Ashe exhales after a moment. She runs a hand through perfectly white hair, mussing it entirely as fingers rake from root to end and when she's done she's more ruffled, less refined, more…

It's not embarrassment. Ashe seems shameless. _Is_ shameless. Her coming to the Cabaret had been for entirely different reasons, and she had ended her night offering to dance with a stranger and attempting to kiss them because she had _wanted_ to, and it's a quality Amélie cannot fault. As before, she is much like her.

Ashe is still muddling, thinking as she chews the corner of her lip. It's fascinating, to watch each emotion cross her face. Eventually, she meets Amélie's unwavering gaze again. "I get it. I'm going too fast for you."

She doesn't _say_ it, but the unspoken is clear. She won't try to kiss her again.

Amélie hasn't thought about it, but now she does. _Remembers_ the not so distant memory of Ashe's lips against hers. How she did nothing. How she didn't _know_ what to do, that she wanted—

She looks. Really looks. Ashe is beautiful. _Achingly_ so. She knew that from the moment she first saw her in the Cabaret, taking in the atmosphere and Luna's song, her hair draped about her shoulders, the way in which she carried herself, glass in hand. If she were a piece of art at auction Amélie instantly would have bought her, just another thing to fill the void, to replicate the feeling of _worth_ , of wanting. But Ashe is alive. Has something she doesn't have and will never have again. She deserves a finished piece of art, not one that was broken.

It would be… kinder, to let her believe her own words. To settle with what had already been.

_But I am crueller, for I am never satisfied_

"No," Amélie says, surprising herself at her conviction as she takes one of Ashe's hands for herself, so that she _can't_ leave. 

Ashe's eyebrows raise: she expects _more_ , but further words fail Amélie. She doesn't know what else to say. Her thoughts feel far from her own, too many. Her heart beating too fast, beating no faster than normal, a lover's face in the scope, a lover's face to _kill_ , and if they turn around to look at her, not his, but _hers…_

"I—" Amélie stammers, shaking her head and wishing them, _everything_ away. She doesn't know. She can't. She's not supposed to. She _won't_. She wants—

Ashe is reading her again, for what little she's given her. But there are no lines to read between, or so she thinks.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Ashe says, her touch gentle as her fingers interlace with hers. It's meant to soothe, but Amélie feels so _hollow_ , the words cutting her like a knife. Ashe doesn't _know_ , but she must, she _must…_

She shakes her head again, and it's wearisome, overcomplicated. She can see the smugness beneath Ashe's patience, because her words have hit home. Is that what she thinks? That she's _afraid?_

She's not. She can't be.

Is she?

"It— I was… caught, off guard," Amélie decides. Ashe's eyebrow quirks – doesn't believe her, knows an excuse when she hears one. "That's all."

That's _all._

It's a feeble reinforcement, and she still hasn't answered. Ashe hums, pensive. "I told you," she says, her free hand reaching up to Amélie's face, resting beneath her chin. "I can handle it."

Ashe leans is. 

She _isn't_ afraid. She's ready this time. Closer, closer— 

Just shy of making contact, Ashe stops. Waits. Amélie leans after the other woman as she pulls away – she _wants_ to kiss her. Her body knows. Ashe knows too.

Amélie frowns, just a little. 

She _hates_ games.

She can feel the smirk coiled against the corner of her mouth as she kisses Ashe, properly this time.

There isn't an overture. No spell is broken, and she doesn't feel again. It would be a lie to say she hadn't wondered, if it would change something. It doesn't.

And yet—

It's something to be savoured. And she gets the hang of it, slowly, Ashe's eagerness not leading her astray as she focuses on her, on _only_ her, and kissing her as much as she likes. 

Perhaps it's enough.

_If love's a game, I like to win_

Perhaps Luna's right.

_Even if it makes you cry_

\- - - -

She's not sure what she's doing here.

She knows she _shouldn't_ be here, the repeated mantra a nagging, unwelcome reminder whittling away even as she raps her knuckles against the trimmed door. It's… wrong, somehow, that she's intending to access a parlour via ordinary means rather than through a balcony or an unlatched window, that she's not slipping inside to her chosen perch at just the right moment unnoticed, but she's outside this suite in this spotless corridor because she's invited. Expected.

As insatiable as Ashe's appetite for kissing her had been, eventually even she had been forced to relent, sniffing from the quietness of the pre-dawn chill with the last bar long emptied and her escort long left. She had looked so… fragile, a stranger in a city that was not her own, that Amélie had found herself offering to take her back to her accommodations, but Ashe had waved her off.

"You're probably missed," she'd said, through a yawn. She was wrong. No one cared, not in the way she meant it. "And I could use some sleep."

"Will you come back to the Cabaret?"

It was a non-pertinent question: selfish, and entirely ridiculous to ask. Her borrowed life was spent, the night over and done, and it should _remain_ so – just another memory to seal, another visage to haunt her. She justified it to herself that it would be better to know if it may happen again. If her time at the Cabaret was not time she would be spending alone, as she intended it to be. If—

If their _last kiss_ was not yet had, but to come.

Ashe had seen through it, just as she had all evening. It should have been troubling, at how easily she unravelled her. It wasn't. 

"Maybe." Her answer was vague, and she hadn't liked it. "I _am_ going to be in town for a while, and it'd be nice for the _distraction…_ that and there's the added incentive to go back if a certain someone's going to be in attendance."

She liked that answer better.

Ashe left it at that. _Had_ left. But her actions had spoken louder than any veiled statement as she tucked the address of her hotel inside Amélie's coat, scrawled on the back of a napkin the way they always did in old films. The final piece had been to place a kiss upon her cheek, with a whisper in her ear that when Amélie _wasn't_ needed elsewhere, she'd like to see her again _long_ before the Cabaret allowed.

And so she was here, the self same afternoon. It wasn't as though _they_ needed anything from her. Not today, not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Without instruction there was naught for Amélie to do _but_ wait, forced to answer Moira's asinine questions about how she _felt_ as she did. 

Talon. They were so very _confident_. Foolishly. Justifiably. She was their _masterpiece,_ kept on a leash; there was no reason to deny it. She was allowed to wander as and where she pleased, as long as she obeyed. As long as she followed the _rules._

She isn't following the rules right now. She wonders if her being here could be interpreted as too eager. Perhaps it is. Perhaps _she_ is. She had to, to see the Calamity again for herself. She had nothing of her, not even her handwriting, the napkin soon after destroyed because it was never wise to leave a trace. She had to know if she was real, that she had truly danced with her beneath makeshift stars, and kissed her and kissed her and _kissed_ her.

Amélie places her forefingers over her lower lip. She _wants_ to be here, to kiss her again. She had thought of little else all morning. Wrestled with it, denied it, bored, _desperate_ , and then she was here, just another Parisian calling upon their lover. 

That's what it looks like. That's what she wants. 

Ashe… is taking far too long to answer her door, she thinks.

It's too late to leave, now that she's inside. Amélie buries her hands deep in her pockets and rolls her shoulders, trying to appear casual, to blend rather than draw attention. There's nobody, nobody at all in the hall; fortunate, as it's proving far more difficult than usual. She frowns at the door, her persistent unease perplexing, but when it at last opens her usual stoicism returns, in part because it is a stranger that faces her.

True, Ashe was still a stranger, a _perfect_ stranger. But the omnic she had only met in passing when Ashe had dismissed him. A palm presses against the doorframe as he stares down at her, expressionless, unknowable. It does naught to settle her or her unease, as it was like being greeted by… well, herself. 

She stares. He stares. Eventually Amélie realises he is waiting for _her_ to say something, to announce herself. He might be able to place her as having been at the Cabaret, and perhaps the reason for his charge returning so late, but knowing those things did not explain what she wanted, _now._

She is terribly out of practice at pleasantries, and it's the sort of thing she should _never_ have lost, being Guillard and Lacroix. 

But she has. Amélie clears her throat, muddling – but even as she contemplates how and _what_ to say she hears movement from further inside, coupled with a familiar flurry of cursing as Ashe stumbles into and over leather boots carelessly left out by past Ashe and past Ashe deserved to know how inconsiderate and dumb that decision had been.

The butler doesn't move, even as Ashe tries. "C'mon, it's just room service," Ashe insists blindly, ducking beneath the omnic's arm as he looks disapprovingly at her for so readily disregarding her own safety. 

She is less together than the night before, Amélie thinks. Hair askew and lips less red, her shirt rumpled and slept in and hastily buttoned. She's as expressive as she remembers her to be, the sheer glee brought about by the certainty of food, _glorious_ food swiftly replaced by something far softer that Amélie finds as indescribable as the omnic's unchanging features.

"Hello," Amélie says quietly, hands clenching and unclenching in her pockets. The action irritates her as she recognises it. She needs to say something else. Make up an excuse. Leave.

Yet as she tumbles into reassessment of all the decisions that led her here, Ashe makes her feeling clear, pulling Amélie close into her awaiting arms and kissing her on the cheek, all in one fluid motion.

"Oh, _far_ better," she says, smirking. "This is the kind of wake-up call a girl could get used to."

It's so… 

Ashe.

Whatever has been plaguing Amélie _goes,_ just like that. If she were more in the habit of smiling, she might have. Instead she traces Ashe's cheekbone with her fingers, brushing aside stray stands of white hair as she goes, allowing them to fall back into place when she's done.

"I realise now that I did not ask," she says. "As to if today was a suitable time."

She lets her hand drop. Ashe takes it as it falls, linking her arm with her own. "But that would have spoiled the surprise," she says with a grin that's _devilish_ by design, steering Amélie inside her suite with a brief touch on the omnic's arm as she passes. If it's meant to be a dismissal, he ignores it, and once the door is closed he stares at the both of them again, silent.

"Bob, it's _fine,_ " Ashe assures him. Something passes between them. Trust, perhaps. Either he isn't convinced or he actually isn't capable of expression, and in Amélie's experience the latter is fairly common place. "Oh, speaking of. Amélie, Bob." Ashe gestures between the two of them, and back again. "Bob, Amélie. Say hi," she adds, with a nudge to Amélie's side.

She does, muttering it. Amélie can practically hear the ingrained sound of a disapproving sigh, her volume never right. 

Unlike the imaginary, Bob does not seem to mind. The omnic raises his hand in greeting, holding it steady for several seconds before bringing it close to his centre, and he follows the movement with a string of hand gestures Amélie doesn't recognise. She shakes her head fractionally, not understanding.

Whatever he's doing, Ashe responds the same way, elbows bumping against her ribs. It's as their exchange grows more rapid that it hits her, that they're signing. She wonders if it was Ashe's idea. If it was something they had learned together. Expressiveness was one thing – it was far less common for omnics to be denied a _voice_ , but it also wasn't unheard of. 

For those designed to be in service to the rich, especially. Of course they would desire an object that didn't speak back. That did what you wanted, without complaint.

It's a strange… likeness, to find.

She looks at Ashe. She knows the story. She's not the first disillusioned daughter of rich parents. She won't be the last. She had freed herself, and Amélie doesn't need to know how; it's readily apparent.

"He says it's nice to meet you properly," Ashe clarifies, and Bob nods. "Not when I'm shooing him away from booths." Bob stops nodding, and Ashe laughs. "Yeah, yeah, I'm _exaggerating,_ but you gotta admit that _is_ kind of what you said."

Bob's shoulders droop. Exasperation, Amélie thinks – if he could sigh, he likely would have. Ashe laughs again, giddiness getting the better of her and she places a hand over her stomach from laughing too hard and too much.

"The pleasure is mine," Amélie says, politely. "I do not plan to cause undue trouble."

"Within _reason,_ " Ashe adds, back in control of her faculties, and Amélie tuts. For a moment she doesn't realise she's done it, and in the next she's surprised by how immediate, how _natural_ it was, and is.

She relents. "I did say that there would be danger, to a degree." She was not about to cause the _worst_ of it, would not bring that ruin here, but if this were the beginnings of love or something like it, that was danger enough, with hearts meant to be opened and shared.

"There always is," Ashe says, echoing her thoughts. "And I _know_ you didn't come here just to say hi."

"No," Amélie agrees, finally unlinking their arms. She could say. But she could also _show._

She's decisive. Slow. Hesitant, almost, but Ashe waits, looking her right in the eye as Amélie brings a hand to gently place against her jaw, silently encouraging her as she figures out how best to rest her fingers, Ashe subconsciously leaning into it as she gets it right.

Her thumb brushes against the corner of Ashe's mouth.

"I've been thinking about kissing you," she says. She blinks, breaking eye contact as she looks, _remembers_ Ashe's lips against hers. "And little else."

"Yeah?" Ashe breathes. 

She doesn't have to say. Amélie knows.

Ashe sighs as she kisses her, as good as she remembers it to be.

\- - - -

Sanjay is speaking.

She hears snatches of it. Places. Names. Boasts. Truthfully, she isn't listening. 

She never does. She's here because she was asked to be; because she was told. The _illusion_ of choice, when in fact she is the only one in this room who didn't have a say in the initial steps of their recruitment. It's a small distinction – and a superfluous one, as she remains. But nevertheless she keeps it.

It's always the same. They will not say their innermost truths in her presence, and she does not need to be here. All she needs to know is where, and when.

Even the who doesn't matter. A face, an image. A target so well loved and adored that every outlet cannot help themselves but to show them. It is only the moment, the _success_ of the hunt and the kill that matters, something that the most difficult of targets so readily provided – and sometimes, she felt it.

_Alive._

Amélie doesn't feel that way now. She may not feel boredom but she remembers it, dutifully holding her tongue so that she will not sigh. Good lapdogs are seen, and not heard.

She stares at the same square of metal she always does, on the farthest side of the table. Slowly her mind begins to wander, thinking about what _she's_ doing… 

The memory of her laugh rings in her ears. Sanjay is talking about something else. She's not sure if it's related.

"Have you reconsidered?"

"No," says someone else. Reyes. "We've been over this. She's ill-suited."

"But she's _here_ , in Paris. How long will she stay? We have a _golden_ opportunity—"

The reaper shakes his head, declining it. Sanjay bristles. The rest of the table chimes in. To her left, Sombra pauses in her shoe scuffing, sensing an impending argument and better yet, potential free entertainment. To her right, Moira taps her nails. She's not really here either, back in her lab, where her latest experiment is. 

Amélie exhales. Sometimes, when they dwell over someone, she'll glance at the display, for a glimpse – a flicker of movement in her eyes for but a second, to memorise the face displayed there. It's really the only thing that _isn't_ a complete waste of her time, anticipatory, practical. There are only ever two options, in the end – the person in question will join them at the table, or they won't. The _'won't'_ usually involves her.

They're still bickering like ill-mannered children, talking over one another. She wonders who it is that's causing them such contradictory debate.

 _Ashe might_ , she thinks, idly.

It can't be.

She looks.

She never pays much attention. 

She's paying it now. The surveillance footage is new, hours old if that, but it's the dated mug shot, the detail in the clear snatches of Ashe's face that attract her.

And she looks.

And looks.

_And looks._

Her expression doesn't change. She tears herself away, back to the same metal sheen. Nobody cares, caught up in their own little kingdoms, but Amélie instantly knows she's made a mistake. It's one thing to look, briefly; it's another to _stare_ , transfixed. 

They were only seconds. But for her, that's a lifetime.

"Is something the matter, Lacroix?"

The ongoing disagreement bores her, but Amélie is her project, and it doesn't surprise her that Moira noticed. The geneticist doesn't elaborate, doesn't say it, but Amélie knows what she's implying.

She _reacted._

The rest of the room saw nothing, but the question is enough to put their argument as to recruiting Ashe on hold. Because it's a threat. Because their hold might have weakened, and something might have changed. She's never the centre of attention, not here, not for long, just long enough to hear her say that yes, she will kill them, but now all eyes rest on her.

Amélie exhales again, a practiced sigh of boredom, as if the very question and the gall to ask it, again, are beneath her.

"No," she says. "I heard similar whispers. Should I not know what the face of a potential target looks like?"

Hair white as fresh snow. Eyes red as spilled blood, lips painted to match. The smile that never satiated her. The way she chewed at her mouth when she was thinking, when she thought no one was looking. That she could be patient when the prize was worth the wait. How every laugh was truly experienced and felt, and she never did anything in half measure. If something amused her, she said so. If she liked something, she said that, too.

She knew perfectly well.

But Moira, Talon, _cannot_.

Her words are a challenge, and the friction is easy. Regular. Moira is always asking how she _feels_ , but as with those inquiries, she doesn't rise to Amélie's scorn, above such things.

The geneticist shrugs, placated, and the remark is forgotten. Sombra slumps back down in her chair as the conversation between their collective superiors becomes more amicable and turns away, to other things.

Amélie does not speak again. Not for the meeting nor the rest of the day, retiring early with a glass of red wine and staring out across the city to where she dare not go, to the Cabaret and where she wishes she could be.

With her.

\- - - -

Sunrise.

She's lost count of how many, how many she's spent here. 

The night begins as it always does, at the Cabaret – not _every_ night, but most. Some nights they stay and listen, taking in each and all of Luna's songs until the last, and some nights they don't, roaming the streets by the river or climbing high to rooftops where they likely shouldn't be. But they always end here, in Ashe's borrowed suite. 

As long as she stayed, her borrowed time would never end – but sunrise came regardless, just as a clock tower always struck midnight for those that played at pretend. It was inevitable. Steps that would always be repeated, that could not be changed.

Even so, Amélie would find every reason to remain, so that another day of – _this_ , forced idleness – would not stretch endlessly before her. Sleep was a necessary necessity for most, but for her it was a chore. An _unwanted_ thing. It was a place of emptiness, of frustration, if she dreamt. The _lack_ of control, the uncertainty upon waking… there was no part of it she enjoyed. She either slept the entire day away or a few scant hours once the sun rose with no middle ground, and her sleeping habits were poor, but she supposed it was natural. Spiders only came out under the cloak of darkness and discretion, in her experience.

And yet, watching the sun come up over Paris most mornings seemed a fair exchange for the insomnia. It brought a… solace, with it; or perhaps it was the colour, the vibrancy, that the dawn itself was _beautiful_ , something forever beyond her reach. The one purchase to fill the void of things she wanted and liked that she could never make.

Well. It had been the _only_ thing until very recently.

Ashe was not so predictable in her after-Cabaret endeavours. Some nights she wilted right away, exhausted and incoherent, and as sleep is about to take her Amélie kisses her goodnight and departs. Others, she's a livewire, insatiable and talkative and unable to stay stationary for long, regaling Amélie with tales from back home, usually with Bob roped in to play her counterpart, and sometimes she is so _amused_ by her story that she can barely tell it. 

And some nights, Ashe would watch the dawn with her… almost. Boredom would claim her quickly, and she'd wander away to do something else, even if her focus never quite leaft the stoic figure watching the sun peak out over the pitched skyline.

It was like that tonight. Ashe has a fresh bottle of signature red varnish on the table in front of her, and she's on her second or third coat – Amélie's lost count. 

Ashe is not the only one unable to tear themselves away. From her periphery, Amélie watches her, her cheek resting perfectly against her palm. Here, now, she's a perfect model. The filtering light from her perch on the sill only adds to it, and occasionally Ashe pauses. It's not why Amélie's doing it – she would sit here regardless – but she _is_ aware it's photogenic, and the effect that it has. That it would make any master or appreciator of the arts cry. That she is meeting Ashe's aesthetical tastes exactly.

She remembers how it feels, to be watched. Her, her movements the _only_ thing they're thinking about. It's… it should be thrilling, she thinks. She doesn't remember. But the small moments of Ashe's distraction are themselves assuring. So many sunrises, and Ashe _still_ finds her alluring.

She hopes.

She does. There's a flush on Ashe's face when Amélie meets her gaze, and Ashe looks away. She's probably thinking about kissing her – of all the other things she would like to do with her, later. 

It will keep. For now, Amélie's nights were this, her days for Talon. For now, there wasn't an end in sight.

Ashe clears her throat, and her head, returning to practiced paint strokes. She starts humming, never as content with silence as Amélie is. 

She recognises it. Luna's. Amélie knows it well, as it is her favourite. Ashe throws in a word here and there with each flourish, painting to rhythm, and Amélie returns to looking beyond her window.

She sighs. It's a different sort of sigh. Not exasperation, or boredom, or irritancy. She has no name for it, no name for what she tried, however briefly, to express.

Maybe Ashe knows. Tonight, she seems content. Satisfied. Comfortable that she will come back tomorrow, and the day after that.

She wonders if she feels the same—

No. She _can't._ She is still as she is, was made. Still Widowmaker, an assassin biding her time.

But if she can understand _Ashe_ and her feelings, then—

She shouldn't wonder, but she does. Is. She still wonders when Ashe interrupts the early morning quiet with an actual sentence.

"We could still go somewhere, you know."

She stops.

The statement is heavy. It sits between them, suffocating. Ashe doesn't elaborate any further, but Amélie knows. They've had this discussion before. She's _asked_ her before. 

She isn't talking about Paris. 

Amélie looks not past the windowpane and out, but in it, at her cloudy reflection. 

She knows. What Ashe wants most _is_ more. So does she. She can see it reflected back at her, in the sadness that never leaves.

It isn't allowed.

If they would just give her a mission, a life to _take_ —

No. 

_No._ She isn't going to think about it. Not here.

"We cannot," Amélie says firmly to the Amélie looking back at her, a perfect recital of the previous time and the time before that.

Ashe clicks her tongue. " _You_ can't," she corrects.

Pedantry. Amélie sighs again, this one more familiar; _annoyance._ "Fine. _Me._ It's still impossible. I don't see how it only being the one of us matters—"

"It does."

Amélie scowls at the interruption. She isn't listening. And Ashe is so—

 _Stubborn,_ when she gets like this.

She needs to know. She needs to stop asking. Amélie shifts on the sill, the position suddenly uncomfortable, and looks at her perfect stranger. Her dark eyes are hard, venomous; a _warning._

"You don't – you don't understand what – what _binds_ me."

She doesn't mean to sound so frustrated, so broken.

But she is.

She _always_ is.

Ashe's features soften, slowly. Remorse. It makes her _weak,_ a small corner of Amélie's mind insists, that Ashe's stubbornness and games would be far more efficient if the rest was stripped away.

She closes her eyes. She _needs_ to stop.

Ashe abandons the varnish. Amélie hears her move, set to cross the space between them. She reaches for her fingers, turning Amélie's palms upward. She thinks about snatching them away. It plays out in her head – the outcomes, the consequences.

She is not being honest.

Not with herself. Not with Ashe.

Fingers curl into hers. Ashe's nails are freshly painted red, and Amélie's palms are going to be stained the same, but Ashe seems to have forgotten.

"Then tell me."

She can't do that either. Amélie shakes her head vigorously, and she does not dare open her eyes. It reminds her of their first kiss, that there is too much – to think about, too much she can't _process,_ a bombardment of nondescript frustrations that she has to keep in check. They _stole_ her from herself, and she has to live with it. And as many rules as she has bent in her defiance of self, there is one she cannot break.

If she did—

She knows, _painfully,_ how it ends.

It's one of the reasons she never… stays, when Ashe falls asleep.

How blessed and blissful people were to be able to make such naïve decisions as to run away with someone they barely knew. How ridiculous that she herself had _considered_ it, however briefly – in that small, tiny moment where all suggestions were feasible possibilities.

Ashe hasn't moved. Quiet. She sighs, and unlike that first night, she doesn't define it.

She has to answer her, Amélie knows.

It's the least she can do.

The _most_ she can do.

Grief is not so easy to take. She at last grips Ashe's fingers in return, and looks her in the eye.

"There is no future with me, _cherie_ ," she says, quietly. 

It's another warning. Not to involve herself. That she cannot expect, have, _more_ than this.

And a chance, for Ashe to ask her to go. A choice. Before—

Before she is _everything_ that she can think about.

Amélie knows it's already too late for herself. But midnight will always strike, and glass slippers will slide from their owner's feet no matter the care. If she wishes her away, she will abide to it.

Her reply isn't quick. Amélie studies Ashe's face, and her silence. She's… deliberating, her eyebrow long quirked. The brief look into a non-existent future has thrown her off balance, the present and _now_ more her speed, and she doesn't know what to make of it. She smiles, about to say something, closes her mouth. Stalls. Likely now is the point she realises she'll have to redo her nail varnish from scratch. And—

She _knows_ she's been playing a dangerous game from the start; has said as much herself.

"I… don't know how to deny it, when you say it like _that_ ," Ashe admits. "I want to, I _really_ do, but I don't— know what words to use that'll convince something dug so deep. Except hers."

She smiles, and scoffs quietly at herself, shaking her head. She releases Amélie's fingers – her palms are stained, as expected – and traces the creases there, back and forth.

" _'Love is cruel, but I am crueller'_ ," Ashe echoes. She looks up, into Amélie's eyes, the back of her knuckles now resting against her cheek. She can feel her breath, her whisper in her ear. "And I am _not_ yet satisfied."

\- - - -

"I want you to kiss me," Amélie says.

She's never asked her before. Not here. Not anywhere. But watching Ashe watch Luna sing, a flash of teeth in her steady grin, she can't bear it. It's misplaced jealousy. It's _not_ jealousy. She just needs Ashe to _look at her,_ the way she's looking at the Cabaret stage right now.

Ashe shudders, the words sending a shiver down her spine. For a moment it's clear she thinks she's misheard. She starts to say something, perhaps a tease, a 'it's funny, because I thought you _asked_ ', but it dies in her throat as she looks. 

Amélie always plans everything, down to the finest detail. Always. She watches. She waits. She observes. She is never _this_ reckless, never this spontaneous.

She is now. Ashe is looking at her, as she wants. It's not enough.

"What?"

"Kiss me," Amélie repeats, no longer a question.

Ashe is all too happy to oblige.

\- - - -

It's snowing.

She is too early for the Cabaret, the doors closed for revolutionaries and sinners and Amélie is only one and not both of those things. It's something she doesn't expect, then, when she sees the butler already there, waiting for her.

He is less suspect than usual, she notes, with a custom fit tuxedo complete with coattails and a rich red rose tucked into his lapel – in one arm he has a paper bag piled high with pastries from the nearby bakery, and the other an umbrella, dusted in white. He is perfectly still, unhurried and untroubled by the freezing temperature, and Amélie has no clear indication as to how long Bob has been standing there.

Something stirs, in the pit of Amélie's stomach. She wants to know _why_ he's here, but it's more than that. Where? She's never sent the omnic in her stead before. She knows Ashe is in Paris for reasons of her own, exposing herself to a great many dangers that she is well equipped to handle, be they those she knows of or those she does not. It's not her place to ask. It's not her prerogative to know. It will be safer for the both of them if she doesn't.

But if she _were_ waylaid—

It bothers her. She reminds herself it's pure supposition. That she is getting ahead of herself.

The omnic still doesn't move as Amélie approaches. He only swivels at the last, to regard her as she joins him beneath the umbrella, angling it to better cover her, leaving himself exposed. Amélie raises a hand as he does so, propelling it back to its original angle.

She skips the pleasantries. 

"Why are you here?"

Bob blinks, as unerring as ever. The cold metal of his hands bump against hers as he passes her the umbrella to hold, reaching inside the bag of pastries. He knows exactly what he's looking for, pulling out a folded piece of paper.

Amélie takes it, holding the scrap open with her forefingers. Ashe's writing, on hotel stationary. Careless.

"She says that she will be late, on account of a gathering," Amélie summarises, although Bob is likely already aware. "And to go back with you to her suite pre-emptively, if I so wish."

She sighs at the paper. At how _sure_ Ashe is that she will.

That she thought of her, alone at the Cabaret as she had been so many nights before she came to know her, and couldn't take it.

Amélie ducks her nose beneath her scarf as she exhales. It's not the cold. It's not anything. It's… Ashe is so _certain_ about her, as she is every night, though her assuredness is much more than that. If she can't see a path, Ashe makes one. She's so… _wilful_.

She wonders if Amélie had been the same, in the end.

Clearly, not enough.

She frowns, hidden by her scarf. She keeps slipping, thinking about who she is when Ashe isn't there. She's become too comfortable with this arrangement. That she didn't need her mask and her secrets, and that Ashe would listen. That she could take them.

She cannot. It's a line she will not cross. She would simply have to try harder to be more dancer than spider.

"She is something," she says to Bob, who has been watching her in his perpetual silence. She hands the note back to him, it seeming safer if he keeps it. 

The omnic appears to be contemplating, as much as he able to show it. He reaches for his lapel, and his movements are surprisingly delicate as he unhooks the rose, offering it to her.

She doesn't refuse. Amélie slowly turns the stem between her fingers. Fragile and easily crushed. Already dead. It's the exact same shade as Ashe's lipstick.

She wishes she could see her, _now_. She can, if she asks. But it still feels too long.

She looks at Bob, perfectly sedentary. It's as she's about to agree that he moves of his own accord, shifting his hold on the paper bag so that he can speak to her in the only way he can.

"I'm sorry," Amélie says as his hands grow still. For once, she means it. "I do not know what you are saying."

His free hand flexes, the most unnecessary movement she's ever seen him perform. Ones. Zeroes. Something she will understand. An age or a moment later, he lays his hand to rest over his chest, over where his heart would be, if he had one.

Is— he asking her how she feels?

About Ashe?

"I don't," she says quietly, to her rose. She should lie, but she finds that she can't – she doesn't know _how_. "Not anymore. I don't expect you to understand that."

The omnic blinks back at her. Her words ring in her ears.

Attachment without the means to _feel it_ —

"My apologies," Amélie says, looking away. "I suppose you would."

He's always been there, for Ashe. Her whole life, and Amélie knows fair well he's more than just a string of numbers and code, that his need to protect her is real. That if she is… alive, as much as she _isn't_ , he is equally the same.

Bob nods. She thinks she's forgiven.

He probably already knows, she thinks, the question a formality.

Was it that easy to see?

"My answer," she says after a moment. Maybe it was, when the one asking it already knows what it's like for Ashe to be at the centre of their every thought. "I will go with you. I would like to see her, tonight."

The rose crumples as Amélie presses her hand over her chest. 

"Very much."

\- - - -

"And then that's – for crying out loud, can they not realise that's a _loss_ and not a profit? Idiots. And you," Ashe adds, looking up from her paperwork at Amélie, "do you _have_ to sit there?"

Amélie blinks back at her. "Yes," she says. She was perfectly within reason to sit alongside Ashe on her couch, and if the only place that had escaped the wrath of Ashe's sprawling documents was directly beside her, and so much so that she had to prop her legs over Ashe's knees in order to fit in the small space, so be it. "I do."

"You really, _really_ don't," Ashe objects, her wrist resting over Amélie's thighs as she lowers the sheet of poorly scribbled sums. She blanks for a moment, _thinking_ – then shakes her head, wildly. "Dangit! I _meant it_ when I said I couldn't keep putting this off any longer, y'know," she mutters, tossing the piece of paper aside in exchange for the next, equally riddled with mistakes. 

Amélie watches as she proceeds, smug, impressed at how quickly Ashe is able to fluster herself.

She had been at another party that had spilled over into the late evening, and Ashe was still dressed for it – the _aftermath_ of such a soiree in particular, when the magic of it was gone. Her hair pulled into a tidy bun, now far messier than when the evening began, strands having come free in places and draping down her neck and hastily tucked behind her ears. Earrings an accent to the pink she no longer wore. A high collar black shirt unbuttoned and dishevelled but not removed, her necktie undone and hanging just as loosely over each shoulder…

It was, in short, a _look_ , and one that Amélie appreciated on a whole slew of levels.

How incredibly audacious of her to not lavish her with attention whilst dressed in such a manner, and that she isn't kissing her right now, and Amélie was not above reminding Ashe of it, each and every moment she _wasn't._

"What's the matter?" Ashe asks between corrections. "Windowsill not good enough for you anymore?"

"It is," Amélie muses, resting the back of her neck against her palm. "When you are looking."

Red truly is such a perfect compliment to white, Amélie thinks, her flustered lover pointedly looking away, which just won't do if she expects her to _stop_.

Ashe tries to ignore her. Amélie can see it, the tiny fleeting glances from the corner of her eye because she just can't help herself, the inward chide that follows as she returns to what she ought to be doing. 

The sunrise from her usual perch has lost its lustre, she thinks. Why ever would she choose it, when she could be watching Ashe? She is a portrait of excellence, of beauty. And for now, she is hers.

It's strange, to consider everything that's brought her _here,_ now, but Amélie doesn't wish to think about it and her secrets, not tonight. To pry Ashe away from her work is her prize, and she plans to get it.

She lowers her hand from her neck, carefully reaching out towards Ashe's cheek instead, touch featherlight against her jaw until she holds a solitary finger steady beneath her chin. She wants Ashe to _look_ , and she only resists for so long, easily swayed.

Amélie tilts her head as she swoops closer, placing a kiss against the corner of Ashe's lips.

"Are you certain it cannot wait?"

Amélie is very well aware as to how much she likes to kiss her. Ashe mumbles, resolve on a knife's edge. 

"You're a menace," she says, rolling her eyes as she kisses her hard on the mouth, one hand against her thighs and the other at the small of her back, pulling her closer.

This is _exactly_ what Amélie wants. She meets each and every memorised angle, eager. But there is something else she wants, before Ashe's current look is ruined entirely.

"You went—to a party, alone," she says, scattered between kisses. "It's only right that you—have the last dance, with me."

She leans back, lips just out of reach, Ashe not really caring to what was said as she chases after them. It's then that she listens, retrospectively and forced, and her eyebrow quirks.

"You want to _dance,_ " she states. The unspoken is written across her face, that she would much rather be kissing her, and how _dare_ she make her into this wreck and take it away. " _Now?_ "

"Now," Amélie says. She's bolder for it as she untangles herself from her lover, taking Ashe's forearm to lift her clean from the couch as she does so, pulling her into empty space, perfect for dancing. She places Ashe's hands about her shoulders and her waist, just as they were that first night at the Cabaret.

Ashe allows it, each of Amélie's movements very deliberate, slow, and precise.

"Bossy."

"And you are not, _cherie?_ "

"Yeah, well—shut it."

She scowls, but it's for show, Amélie knows. She can't argue, particularly as she still gets to be close to her, like she wants. Ashe is greedy when she wants to be, but never presumes or takes beyond what Amélie's willing to offer; Amélie very rarely voices what _she_ wants, in comparison. And she knows Ashe is happy with this outcome as she leans into her as they begin to move, her planned work a long distant memory.

She's won. Amélie smirks, amused. And then—

Nothing.

She blinks. She might have imagined it. She can laugh, or smile, if she wants to. But it isn't usually worth her time, an expenditure of effort for poor results – she was off-putting when she did it, they said. Callous. Because she didn't understand. Because she only meant it about morbid, _terrible_ things.

It was a replicated look, now she thinks on it. Ashe's, satisfied: pleased. It's… probably normal that she could borrow her expressions for herself, could understand the feelings that way.

But that's assuming it is only understanding, and not—

No. Supposing was useless. There is nothing in the space of her heart, and there never will be. It isn't like she can _truly_ recall emotion, not then, not now. The dance was most important, and Ashe looking like this, only for her.

There's no song. No sound, but they don't need it. Ashe steps closer, laces the both of her hands behind Amélie's neck, having decided she can work with it. 

"They say the French are the best at this."

Amélie rolls her eyes. Like she hasn't heard _that_ before, so _many_ times. "Only fools believe everything they hear."

Ashe laughs. It's a snicker that starts deep in her throat and ends in Amélie's mouth. It's a noise that does not belong in certain circles of society, but Amélie has long learned Ashe is unabashed about who she is: and she likes her mouth curving against hers.

"Maybe just _you,_ then," Ashe says, and it's impressive that she manages to say much of anything coherent as she charts her way with a kiss here, a kiss there. And Amélie can admit she feels… well, _nothing,_ but she's not so out of touch to not recognise a compliment.

And it's nice. This. _More_ than nice. If only she had other words to give.

Ashe is set to devour her, she thinks, but the next time the other woman comes in for a kiss Amélie gently places a finger between their lips, and Ashe _huffs_ , a soft exhale of breath at the nerve of making her _wait_ after she's already done so much of that.

Amélie almost chuckles. Almost.

Ashe _will_ wait, she knows. Not for long, but enough. Amélie releases her finger and Ashe watches her deliberations, even as Amélie eventually breaks eye contact and makes for the hollow of her throat, slender fingers against her pulse. The fragility of it has never not been her muse. It beats in marching time, more than it usually would, and ever faster than her own – _racing_. Alive.

This is not what she usually does.

She may not feel, but she remembers, distantly. She thinks she knows how to elicit a further reaction. _Wants_ to, to know if she's right.

And if she is, this isn't _pretending._

She replaces her fingers with her lips, and for a moment, Ashe stops breathing.

"You can't just—" she starts, but thinks better of it as Amélie does it again, and when she glances upward the other woman is chewing the corner of her lip and swallowing a curse, and she's _incredibly_ flushed.

"I can't?"

Ashe mumbles, barely audible. 

"Maybe a little."

"Hmm," Amélie ponders. It hasn't escaped her notice that the cards are still hers. Perhaps she was wrong about games – when they were not at her expense. But for now, she is satisfied, and leaves Ashe's neck and returns to her mouth, thinking of a much better use for it.

If life was a moment, this was one in which she would stay.

\- - - -

She has been neglectful.

To successfully hold a ruse, there were still things she had to do in order to remain convincing. The irony isn't lost to her that she hasn't. _Hadn't._ Ashe was perfectly distracting, something, _someone_ who had successfully carved a niche into the life of boredom that Amélie longed to be free from, and she whisked herself away, night after night… but if Ashe could manage to uphold her original designs upon Paris, Amélie was not to be outdone.

She could stand to perform a similar showing, and not to immediately flee like a schoolgirl released from her tutor's clutches at the first presentable opportunity, and neither should she forget her other pre-established habits and haunts. She could reasonably smooth over the last few weeks and her absences as a blip, as rightful impatience, that she was tired of waiting for Talon to need her. It was the… problem, of being _known_ , and the price of success: having to bide her time. They would understand. They would think nothing of it. They would direct her to busywork, to maintenance and upkeep. 

The armoury is as good a place as any to start over, she thinks.

Her rifle feels different as she holds it. Nonsense. Widow's Kiss was the same, her constant companion. The view from the scope is familiar, and an easy place to settle – what Widowmaker sees. Where she _excels_.

One shot. One kill. She takes aim at the mounted target at the farthest end of the firing range, but she doesn't fire, because she knows she isn't alone.

Sometimes the others will try to engage her, but there's only one who would dare interrupt her when she is about to _shoot_ , the one equally versed in the arts of subterfuge. 

Amélie frowns as she exhales. 

"I know you're there," she accuses, glancing to her left. 

"Wasn't trying to hide it," Sombra says, with a wink. The hacker is inspecting her hands, flicking invisible lint from her nails. She is up to something, Amélie thinks, because she _always_ is. What other reason did she have to follow her? She files everything away, each and every detail – she practically invited herself into Talon, and Amélie has to admit it's impressive that they knowingly take her at her _word_ , that they chose to trust someone whose entire trade was peddling in secrets, when that same person could divulge and rewrite the entire security network in an hour or less.

She knows fair well how confident they are, how conceited it's made them. Perhaps Sombra banks on that, playing them all for fools. Perhaps she doesn't. Perhaps she genuinely wishes for Akande's particular brand of chaos.

It isn't her place to question her. She isn't her enemy – she also isn't her friend, and she never has known what to make of her. It's a bad time to start, now that she has something to hide.

"What do you want?" Amélie asks as she rolls her shoulder, refusing to lower her shot. She would much rather be getting back to it.

"Aww, I can't just drop in on a friend?" Sombra says. Her cutesy way of talking annoys her, because it's a lie. "I mean, I haven't seen much of you lately, after all."

Sombra loses interest in her fingertips. She looks, right at her. As if she knows that something is amiss.

Likely she does. When it comes to Sombra, nothing is ever _nothing_.

She lowers the rifle. Amélie meets the pointed look with one of her own – an _empty_ look, devoid of anything save the understanding of what she had not quite asked.

"Whatever it is you do here, I keep out of your business," Amélie says. "I would appreciate if you stayed out of mine."

Reasonable. Not quite a threat. She insulates nothing, keeps it as vague as Sombra's own; the natural poker face works in her favour, even if Sombra is like to take it as admission. It is her own curiosity she is sating over Talon's own, she reckons, else she would not have approached her here. And she has to know that she will not allow her to wander about her present. It is _hers,_ and _hers_ alone.

And none of them will take it from her.

Sombra looks away first. "Ah, so defensive," she shrugs, standing as she makes to leave back the way she came. The hacker pauses as she reaches the door, casting a wave over her shoulder. "Have fun tonight at Luna's, Widowmaker."

It's a long second before Amélie lifts the rifle again, forcibly dismissing the choice of words. It's a ruse. She has to be convincing. She has her routine to make it so. If it were anyone else that had said that, she wouldn't—

But she _knows_ , what Sombra truly meant.

\- - - -

"So when were you planning on telling me that you're working with Talon?"

She says it quietly between gentle kisses, ushered in like an unwanted guest. It has always been inevitable, that Ashe would find out. She has her contacts, her network… Amélie herself gives it away, with the way she looks. This is the way it always ends. The slipper comes off, and the princess finds her to be a scullery maid. 

But Ashe is not a princess, and neither is she a queen. She's a rebel, an outlaw, a free agent bound to no one's cause but defending her own – what _she_ wants, and what she wants _goes._

And she has certainly chosen her moment to _ask_ for the truth, with the both of them naked and twined in her bed. It's a touch of the dramatic Amélie could appreciate if it were about anything _else_ , and she is as immovable and rigid as stone as the question lingers, because she can't slink away. Perhaps that's the point. 

She doesn't deny it. She can't. Her silence is her own admission, Ashe's eyes hard. Her judgement will follow, she knows. She is unable to read her, the feeling set firm upon her face one she isn't able to define. It reminds her, of other silences. Of vipers waiting to strike. Ashe's finger perfectly poised over the trigger, Amélie no power to stop her.

She feels—

" _'Widowmaker',_ " Ashe accuses, silencing her thoughts. _Widowmaker_. She doesn't like her saying it. It's a name that does not belong here, between them.

She needs to say something. Anything.

"I could ask you the same—"

She knows her choice is wrong as Ashe scoffs, but it's too late to take back. "No, _no,"_ she interrupts. "I was never secretive about _who_ I was. Insignia's everywhere. It's right there on Bob's back every time he turns around, for crying out loud. But you're…"

Her anger falls flat, and she sighs. Ashe's easy, perfect smile wavers, _quivers,_ not quite as unshakable as Amélie has always thought it to be.

"I just," she starts – has to stop, on account of the lump in her throat. "I just—I need to know if the plan was always _this_ or if it's just some flight of fancy before you bring me in. That's all."

She doesn't specify why Amélie would be doing that, but they both know what she isn't saying. Their palms are equally stained.

She doesn't know how to do this. She can see, _hear_ Ashe's pain in her voice, and ever damned she feels _nothing_ for it, save that she doesn't like the fact she, Amélie and also _Widowmaker,_ is the one who is the cause of it. She did this. She's run this exact scenario in her head, of Ashe finding out countless times, but it doesn't compare. Doesn't even come close. It's _worse_ because Talon may yet ask. She _shouldn't_ , but she did. _She did this._ She… she wants to reach out to her. To show her that she means something, that she means _so much to her_ , in the only way she's ever truly been able to. 

But first she has to say it. Has to re-earn her right to remain here. 

That, in every lie, Ashe isn't one.

"This was not supposed to happen," Amélie says quietly, eyes flickering away from Ashe's face. There's nowhere else to look, surrounded by white sheets as they are, but her truth is already fragile enough, and she _needs_ to get it out whilst she can, where Ashe's own emotions won't confuse it. "There is none. Talon has no plan for you, not yet. Being here is—this is not their choice. It is _mine._ "

She sounds possessive. She recognises the inflection because it's the way Ashe talks about things she wants, sometimes. 

And—

She _knows_ it, because she's fought so hard to keep the things that _are hers_ , even if she did not truly understand it until now. Her adamant refusal to let aspects of her past life go, when she should have; when it would be easier not to think, to allow Gerard's face to become something she could not recall… when she would truly be everything they had ever _wanted_ her to be.

A single death had changed everything.

A single dance had changed it again. 

Ashe is quiet. Reading her. Perhaps it's for the best, that she sees it.

"So they don't know about me."

Amélie shakes her head into her pillow, fractionally. "Not beyond what you wish for them to know."

"And you'll keep it at that?"

She nods.

Ashe sighs. It's different from before.

"Okay."

Now she looks. Her lover is as she was, warm and dangerous and wanting her to _stay_.

Amélie wrinkles her nose.

"You are too simple," she says, not understanding how Ashe is able to take what and who she is and what she has _done_ in her stride. She is, in so many ways, not what she expects, and now, this. Ashe laughs – flicks Amélie's nose with her finger, even – and she wrinkles it further in disgust, which only makes Ashe laugh harder.

"I am _anything_ but," she says. "And you're a right one to talk… even if after all this time I ain't fully convinced."

She wonders, if she knows. If she is indeed right.

Perhaps she should let it go.

But there is still one last thing Amélie has to say, that Ashe needs to know.

Her fingers dance upon Ashe's jaw, and the other woman holds them there, hand over hers.

"I am not going to betray you."

Ashe smiles. They both know. They both know that if it were ordered, if Talon _really_ wanted it, _made_ her, she would. But it's an appreciated lie, all the same – that she will _keep_ it, for as long as she keeps her control.

Ashe's fingers curl over Amélie's as she lowers her hand from her face.

"No more secrets," she says.

Ashe kisses her. Sadly. Wistfully. There were so many more, left unsaid. So many that did not matter.

And the one that did. The one she had no right to _have_ , let alone to say, and it's quite suddenly imperative that she does. Ashe, knowing who and what she is, deciding upon the impossible, something she does not deserve. She has always fascinated her, but now—

She's been walking her way toward this for what is a long, _long_ time.

"Ashe, I—"

It's so simple, yet the words still die. Amélie struggles, and it's not one she wins, not in time. "Shh," Ashe whispers, her eyes closed as she kisses her knuckles, granting her reprieve she's not so sure she wants. "You can tell me in the morning."

Ashe yawns. She's tired – of course. She's been fighting sleep for hours not just for her now fulfilled desires but also on Amélie's accord, she realises. "Will you stay?"

Her eyes open again, and she's looking right at her.

Amélie shuffles. She knows she said that Ashe could trust her, but this is… different. Not about Ashe, but the _kill_. The _thrill_ , and the nightmare. If she could take it. If she could _stand_ it. That she'll see her lover at her weakest, and the last time... she has bent a great many rules of her makers' making, but not the solitary one she's made for herself. She's always been so deliberate, that it's the one safeguard to never break. 

Perhaps, there is one thing she fears.

"You know what you ask for."

Ashe nods. She doesn't have to say it. She can imagine her words perfectly, that she can handle it, and she's never not proved adept. 

It's a choice, Amélie knows. She will think no less of her if she declines, and she almost does.

She doesn't. "Very well," she reasons. She would like to, to see her come alive again, to kiss her half asleep and drowsy, her name the first word on her lips. That and her other incentive. "How else will I tell you what I had to say, when you wake?"

Ashe's immediate glee is catching, keen to hold her to it, and she pulls her close, to sleep.

\- - - -

It's raining.

She can hear it, out through the open windows of Ashe's suite, but she does not care to look, her eyes settled on Ashe and her many, many suitcases, the last of which Bob has just finished packing. The hinge closes with a _snap_. 

Amélie's fingers press hard into her uncovered arms. The sound is so, so _final_ , marking an end. An end the both of them knew was coming.

Bob is looking at Ashe, waiting. It seems to be rattling her that she has to move everything along, that he won't just _do it_ , and the corner of her lip has been chewed a great deal in the past few hours because of it. 

She's doing it now. "Take them out," she says, clicking her tongue. "I'll be there… soon."

It's an uncertain definitive, and the best she can give. The omnic blinks and nods, knowing the cause, casting a more lingering look toward Amélie, indecipherable as ever.

It's a quiet exchange; theirs has no need for words. The butler bows his head, and she inclines hers in return. She can't say, what he thinks of her – but his purpose is to protect Ashe, and he somehow understands that Amélie's connection with her will not always be cause for Ashe to smile. Sometimes it's this. And sometimes it hurts.

Bob turns, taking the final offending suitcase with him as he meanders his way through the rest, out to the door that leads to the hallway.

Ashe listens, waiting for him to leave. She's still chewing her lip, holding her breath. It's all Amélie can focus on. She is not feeling this, not as Ashe does, but the creeping numbness is familiar, and all too soon it will _consume_ her, again, and the light will flicker out.

The door clicks. Ashe exhales, but she still doesn't, _can't_ speak, dropping her head into her hands, and she inhales again, _hard_. 

When she looks up again her eyes are redder. Sore.

"I always hated long goodbyes."

"Then don't," Amélie says quietly. She wonders if she's pressing hard enough into her own skin to mark it. How soon the bites she left on Ashe's collarbone will fade. "It is already… difficult, enough."

Ashe smiles, weakly. "You could still come with me."

She thinks. Imagines it, the life that could be flashing before her eyes… as she already has, so many times before.

"I cannot. Even if—"

She can't say it. She cannot go, and she cannot be saved. There's no shouldn't, no maybes. There is only one outcome, and they've always known it – always left it, the future tomorrow, tomorrow, today.

She's crushing her own heart now to keep her safe, and later, she will drown in it.

"Worth a try," Ashe chuckles. She misses it the moment it's gone. Misses her smile. At last Ashe has the courage to stand, immediately reaching for her hands and Amélie lets her, the outlaw unhooking her pinching fingers from her skin one by one so that she can hold her hands in hers, one last time. "Don't cry too much after I'm gone, okay?"

Amélie barely shakes her head. It's a ridiculous thing to ask, but she indulges her. "I won't."

"Not even a little?"

" _Ma cherie,_ " Amélie says, softly. "You know full well that I cannot."

"But you are," Ashe says. Amélie doesn't understand why she's being so insistent about this, even with their shared, unshared heartache – not until she raises one of her claimed hands and places it over Amélie's still-beating heart, folding her own perfectly over it. " _Here_."

It beats.

It stops.

She gets it. She does. She hears her own laugh, the single note of despair it brings and it's all _nonsense_ , but Ashe is right. It's why she seeks the moment of the kill. Why she mourns. She goes to the Cabaret, and she listens to an omnic sing of love and life and feeling, her heart crying out because she _wants_ those things. That is what awaits her. That's where she will always be. 

Ashe can see she's hit a chord, as she always does. "You said it yourself, sugar," she says, sniffing. "You're like me. And I'm—"

Her words fail her. Amélie has no hold over her own, no means of anything save to softly kiss her goodbye.

\- - - -

The lights on the stage are bright enough to sting.

Applause scatters as Luna makes her way through the small crowd, telling them all how charming they are. It's her second and final set of the night, and Amélie's fourth or fifth glass of wine. She hasn't kept count.

The Cabaret is the same spectacle as ever, a place where Luna still dares you to be yourself, but the sentiment rings hollow. She barely notices. Amélie has not thought much of _anything_ since Ashe left, her everyday motions perfect, too clinical, too _Widowmaker_. Only here does her heart truly ache, remembering Ashe's last request, to think of her as Luna sings… and think of her she has.

The wine has only brought her departed love further into focus. Likely, she should stop. Six is too many. It won't make a difference. It won't change the fact that she's gone, that she's not coming back.

A shadow falls over Amélie as she ruminates, and there's the soft chink of jewellery against metallic wrists as fingers brush against the edge of her table.

"It has been some time since you were here last, my dear," Luna says. Her gaze is unfathomable. On her, it's elegant. "And alone."

"Yes," Amélie agrees, quietly. Luna is observant of her clientele – she has to be, in her line of work. Amélie always came, and left as she arrived. And then she _hadn't_ , and of course Luna would have noticed. How quick they had become a together. How swiftly it had gone. How soon she had found herself back here on empty lonely nights, listening to songs of regret and wanting.

She swallows, looking away. She needs an excuse. Luna is the only one who knows. She only has to come up with one.

"She had… things to attend to."

It's poor. It's better than saying she left.

It tells Luna enough, and she nods. "The heart and head don't always agree," the omnic says, cryptically. She tilts her head, humming in thought. "A request for you tonight, I think. What would you most like to hear? It shall be my encore."

She's never offered it to her before. Amélie knows them all, but there's only one she wants. "My favourite," she says. She doesn't doubt the songstress knows, even if this is the first time they've spoken.

"Ah, yes," Luna nods, the smile in her voice pleasant. "Most fitting."

She glides away, ethereal. The crowd's enthusiasm swells as Luna steps back upon her stage, just as swiftly ebbing again as she takes her place at her microphone. For a moment, she says nothing, deliberating, her pre-emptive accompaniment looping around her.

"My last song of the night," she says. "May it help you."

She begins to sing.

_"En amour je joue pour gagner,  
Aux perdants leurs yeux pour pleurer…"_

The song sweeps her away, as Amélie wants. Everything goes.

She remembers when Ashe would sing this, under her breath. 

She remembers the first time they met, right here. The dance. The first kiss, the last, those inbetween. How she's changed. How she hasn't. How the game was done, but neither of them had wanted it.

_Ashe—_

She blinks, grounded again, and not by her own choosing. Her booth is no longer solely hers, but tonight's stranger is not a stranger.

"Relax. I'm not staying," Sombra assures her, waving her hand. "Although, it _is_ a nice night. Too nice to be wasted on going home."

She sounds very sure. Amélie frowns, her preconceptions at the hacker's arrival waylaid. She is saying something else, buried. But what? She knows Sombra does nothing without a gain, without reason. Each of her choices are deliberate. She does not trust her, not at all, not when she's _followed_ her. The Cabaret is not a secret, but Sombra has never attended it before.

That she _has_ followed her, invited herself to her table… it is exactly why she should consider her, her words.

"What do you mean?" 

Her posture doesn't relax, her arms perfectly folded. Still doesn't, not even as Sombra shrugs, unfazed, reaching into her collar.

"They've made a choice," she says. "They're going to tell you in the morning."

She _knows_ , even before Sombra places the familiar insignia on the table.

She knew from the beginning.

\- - - -

It was always going to end this way. 

Her rifle is heavy in her hands, the heaviest it's ever been. The outlaw exhales, out through her mouth.

"You sure know how to make an entrance," Ashe says. "Widowmaker."

Ashe's gun is still settled at her hip. It's unwise, and foolish, even if this is her hideout, and typically assassins don't announce themselves. Amélie doesn't doubt Bob will come running if Ashe calls. She doesn't need them. The chosen moniker is a curse, a dagger, right through her heart – a _divide_. There is only one end. There are no other answers. It's why she's _here_.

"That's what they _want_."

"To hell with what _they_ want," Ashe says. Amélie can see the fury slowly building behind her tear-pricked eyes, as though the Calamity could take on all of Talon fuelled by it, and win.

She can't. "I _know_ ," Amélie says. Her hands shake. She's losing her nerve. She doesn't _make_ choices, not unless they are small, inconsequential. She has always been _told_ what to do when it matters, when she might not wholly want it. 

This one matters.

She couldn't.

She _can't_.

She won't.

Ashe's fingers linger on her rifle. She thinks that it's over. That there's no reasoning with her. 

She lowers her own. "That's not why I'm here," Amélie says, quietly.

"Then _why_?"

"Loose ends."

She isn't dressed for reunion. Her eyes flicker up, to Ashe. Ashe's confusion clears as she looks at her, Amélie's expression and remaining distance saying all she has not.

"Don't," Ashe says. "Not now. Don't you _dare_ say it."

It sounds like an order, or a desperate request.

"I have to."

"You _don't_. You decided that for yourself, Amélie! You never _asked me_. You still could."

She makes it sound so easy, to _decide_. Avoidance of the impending order was more accurate, and she would not sit pretty awaiting them to make it. For her faults, the hacker had gifted her with the option, and she had taken it, her getaway clean and rushed. She knew Talon would come looking for her, now she was gone – their wounded pride would not allow them otherwise. And in time, they would find her. 

But it wouldn't be with Ashe.

It was the only way. She knew the options, the others, that weren't. To remove herself from the equation finitely would have been… simplest. She had thought about it, ruled it out in quick measure. She would _not_ satisfy them with her own death after all they had taken from her.

She could run. She could make it seem incidental, and for a time Talon would be occupied, and Ashe would be safe – would have the forewarning to do _something_ to shield herself, what with their favoured markswoman gone.

And so she was here. To say what Ashe had refused to say to her before, because now, it _had_ to end.

So much for choices.

Amélie opens her mouth. No sound comes out. She swallows. Nothing. Frustration. _Ache_. 

She thought she could do it. But now that she's here, _looking_ at her, she still

Can't say

_Goodbye._

She didn't have to come, but she owed it, to Ashe. To herself. It's all systematic, logical, and her heart should have no say in this – it isn't supposed to be _able_ to have a say in this, but she knows what's stopping her. 

Perhaps she was wrong. 

It's exactly why she has to leave.

Why she had to run.

It's so… unsatisfactory, even if it's the right thing for her to do. Ashe has always made that third option clear to her. She shouldn't take it. She couldn't be selfish in this. It would be cruel, and – and far braver, to stay, to be with her. To be _happy_ , again, in whatever way she could.

Even if it was dangerous. Or that she was afraid.

Ashe is waiting. Has always waited, far longer than she deserves, but love never was so easily accounted for.

"Ask," Ashe says, after a moment. This time it's softer. A hope. A reminder, that she was no longer alone – that her outlaw could handle it. That they both could, together. 

_Stay._

She has been such a fool, about so many things.

Not this. Amélie exhales softly, her heart and its truth fully exposed.

"Would you still— run away, with me?"

There's a chuckle and a smile, a shake of her head, but there are more important things. Her question is all the permission Ashe needs to press her forehead against Amélie's, and to kiss her, soundly. 

" _Yes_ ," Ashe says. "Yes."

**Author's Note:**

> here in 2021 we deserve happy endings
> 
> this fic was a beast to edit and i have learned editing a 1.3k fic is not the same as editing a 12.5k fic, especially when you have, idk, a dozen different effective one shots in the same document - and neither is it like chaptered stuff because there's no natural break as everything is entirely unrelated and kind of like chapters themselves. but hey, i got there in the end!
> 
> bob (and ashe) knowing ASL is one of my favourite personal headcanons and the entire section with him and amélie is pure indulgence (this fic is pure indulgence rems what are you talking about), but y'know what, he deserves it. sometimes a family is two snipers and their robot butler and i'm here for it.


End file.
